Beneath the Volcano Religion, Cosmology and Spirit Classification Among the Nage of Eastern Indonesia

Gregory Forth

ISBN 10: 906718120X / ISBN 13: 9789067181204

Published by KITLV Press, 1998

About this Item

Seller Inventory # D1039336B530EA2

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Beneath the Volcano Religion, Cosmology and Spirit Classification Among the Nage of Eastern Indonesia
• Publisher: KITLV Press
• Publication Date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 906718120X
• ISBN 13: 9789067181204
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Beneath the Volcano is the first major account of the Nage, who inhabit the central part of Flores in eastern Indonesia.
The book focuses on Nage ideas concerning a variety of spiritual beings and how these influence both ritual practices and ideas about human beings. In exploring these subjects, the author sets out to uncover a classification of spirits. While quite different from taxonomies of natural beings, Nage ways of linking named categories of spirits nevertheless reveal a regular conceptual order. In describing this order, use is made of a version of Dumont's notion of 'encompassment'. Common ideas informing relations between Nage humans and several categories of spirits are further interpreted as instances of a pervasive principle of 'symmetric inversion', according to which human beings are spirits for the spirits.

About the Author

Gregory Forth is at present Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta, Canada.